When Pennywise reunited with lead singer Jim Lindberg in 2012 after a four-year split, the band turned to its early Hermosa Beach days to find material for its new album.

Specifically, the quartet went back to a batch of songs the band had written and worked on in its rehearsal space before hitting the big time in the early 1990s.

The bulk of the lyrics were written by bassist Jason Thirsk, the man who inspired Lindberg to join Pennywise. Thirsk died in 1996 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a bout with alcoholism.

The reinvigorated band pays tribute to Thirsk and recaptures the freewheeling spirit of its early days with the new album “Yesterdays,” which features explosive, fresh-sounding recordings of the old songs.

We talked with Lindberg about those days and the band’s current upswing in activity.

Q: So, you kept all these old songs in reserve all these years?

A: We always knew we had this batch of songs that we never recorded. Seven of the songs on the record were taken from right around the time I first joined the band at the end of 1988. We were practicing at a little one-car clapboard garage in Redondo Beach on Irena Avenue. One of the cool parts of the “Yesterdays” record is a bonus track of us originally playing the songs way back when, where you can hear them teaching me the words to the various songs.

It happened really quick for us right after that. As soon as we learned these songs, we started playing parties, then someone from KXLU called and wanted us to come in after we made a record with Marc Theodore at Theologian Records, and then we were signed to Epitaph.

Q: So you came up with new material for Epitaph, and left these songs behind?

A: Yeah, we had to. We looked at it like, those are our early songs, you know, from like, six months ago (chuckles). And now we have to write some important songs. But it is important to remember that I was initially drawn to the band because of these early little melodic hard-core songs that they were playing.

I loved the late 1980s PMA (positive mental attitude) bands that came after the early 1980s nihilistic punk bands. The bands that were still going strong then were Dag Nasty, 7 Seconds and Minor Threat, and they were all about positivity. And for me, coming out of UCLA as an English major, I had read a lot of Emerson and a lot of Thoreau and I was really keyed in on the whole idea of taking life on your own terms. I was an idealistic graduate. So it really stoked me out to have a combination of a philosophy that I really appreciated along with the kind of punk music that I listened to growing up and loved so much.

Later on, the band had to change. But that first batch of songs were innocent, they had that youthful energy.

Q: So tell me about Jason Thirsk. Did he write these early songs, or just the lyrics?

A: He wrote all the lyrics for the songs from that period. Songs like “Thanksgiving,” “She’s a Winner,” “Slow Down,” “What You Deserve,” “Am Oi!” those are all Jason. He was a huge part of the band. Fletcher (Dragge) brought his guitar-playing style from his early hard-core days, and Jason brought all the message for Pennywise and the attitude for our lyrics. He’s what drew me to the band. He was a great guy. I didn’t know Fletcher that well, but I knew Jason very well. He even had an earlier band called PMA and I just thought that was the coolest thing.

Jason was always the emotional core of the band. It was a real tragedy for us when we lost him. We all felt kind of rudderless after that. Obviously, too, the world changed after that, it got very political right after that time. So many crazy things happened after this initial simple and very innocent first period of the band.

You think about 1988, what happened right after that. It was the L.A. riots, there were the Clinton and Bush years, and then 9/11. It went from innocence of our youth to the experience of a rapidly changing world. So our music changed right along with that. It became overtly political, questioning the world and why things were the way they were.

That’s why it’s so great for me to get back to this early music, because it’s really a reconnection with Jason and us starting out at that time. We were just a bunch of surf kids playing backyard parties and having fun.

Q: Was it awkward or difficult at all getting back with the band in 2012?

A: You know, once we made the decision to try it again, it felt completely normal. People might have trouble realizing that, but we’ve been through so much together. We split because we’d had enough of each other. We had just done a ton of touring. We changed labels and put an album out on MySpace Records, and, for me, it was time for a hiatus. It wasn’t for the other guys. They wanted to go to Brazil (and tour). Instead of us discussing and talking about it, there were hate emails back and forth. I didn’t talk to them for three years. I did my own record (“The Black Pacific” in 2010), and they did a record with another vocalist (“All or Nothing” in 2012 featuring singer Zoli Teglas).

I think for all of us, we knew the Pennywise family wasn’t the same. As much as it was OK to do other things, I think we all realized the true spirit of the band. It is about friends and brotherhood, when you consider that we had the song “Bro Hymn” about friends, to have that fracture was crazy. I remember talking to a friend of mine on my birthday, and me saying, “How did we screw that up? We’re supposed to be the ‘Bro Hymn’ band talking about friends, and I haven’t talked to those guys in three years.”

Q: It must have been fun coming back to these old songs, finding common ground.

A: We said, well, we could do new songs together and make a proper album. Or we could take all the pressures off ourselves of having to say something relevant in 2014 and go back to where we really started and finally put out these songs. They may not be the most sophisticated songs (chuckles) in the world, but they represent a time in the world for us when we didn’t have all those pressures.

A song like “She’s a Winner,” we would never write a reggae intro like that for a song in 2014. If I said tomorrow, ‘Hey guys, I got a reggae intro for this song,’ they would laugh me out of the room. But “She’s a Winner” has always been one of my favorite Pennywise songs of all time because it’s honest. It’s Jason talking about his girlfriend and how he loves her and they love going to parties and they didn’t need to hang out with each other all the time because they had their own friends, but they would end up together when the day was done. It couldn’t have been more simple. It wasn’t a time to solve the world’s problems through our songs and that’s what we all loved about it.

Q: Tell me how the Summer Nationals tour with Bad Religion and The Offspring came about.

A: When I got back in the band I tried to map out the perfect scenario for us to follow. I thought we should play a couple shows at the Hollywood Palladium, put out a best-of Pennywise album with some old tracks, and then let’s find some of our peers from the early Epitaph days and go on the road together in a package tour. That all pretty much unfolded.

We got a phone call saying Bad Religion, The Offspring and The Vandals want to go on tour with a package called Summer Nationals, and we said, “We’re in.” We cancelled all of our other plans and said, “Let’s do it.”

All of our bands have been through triumph and tragedy and lineup changes galore, and somehow we’re still around 25 years later and still have a really loyal following of people who love our music. To go out and play for people again all over the place will be great.

The weird part is we’ve never toured with The Offspring and we’ve near toured with Bad Religion. We’ve done shows together, on festivals and individual bills, but we’ve never been on a tour together with them.

Q: When I first saw Bad Religion live, I expected to see these guys in hard-core punk get-ups. But when they came onstage, they looked so normal.

A: It says a lot about (Bad Religion co-founder) Brett Gurewitz. He’s a great songwriter, the songs speak for themselves. His song “Stranger Than Fiction,” kind of sums the whole thing up. Go back and check it out, it has fantastic lyrics. But I feel a kinship in that as well. There are bands that are all about flash, they’re all about their image. In 2014, we’re seeing that more than ever. If a band doesn’t have an airtight look and image, they might as well just go home. Whereas we all still dress like that guy checking the waves down at the beach. We’re not trying to impress anyone.

It’s really cool that Cher can go out and do what she does in those outfits. More power to her, you know (laughs).

Q: But you’re not gonna do that.

A: Yeah, we’re not. I think there’s something cool about the look of these workmanlike skate punk bands. We just went out there and played music about what a crazy world it was and tried to get people to run around and bash into each other at high velocity.

Q: I think you were pretty successful in doing both.

A: And we wanted to give people something to think about, too, and I think we did that as well.

Q: So, the Summer Nationals tour won’t be playing L.A.?

A: No, we’re doing record release shows here. The Offspring had a commitment to do a show here already, they’d already booked a local show before talking to any other bands about the package tour.

Q: But fans can see Summer Nationals in San Francisco, Las Vegas and San Diego?

A: That’s right.

Q: Are you thinking ahead to the next Pennywise album?

A: We’re not talking about what’s next at the moment. We just want to enjoy the moment, enjoy playing on the tour. I have some new songs, Fletcher probably has some songs. When it feels normal and right, we’ll start playing and putting them out. You never want to feel like you have to put out a record. It should be, “I wrote this song and I really love it and I want to play it with you guys.” That’s the time to record new songs.

Sam Gnerre has worked for the Daily Breeze in Torrance since 1984. He grew up in Fontana, Calif., and is a graduate of Fontana High School. He earned a B.A. in English literature from the University of California, Riverside, and a Master's degree in library science from UCLA. He was hired at the Daily Breeze in 1984 to help with the conversion of the paper's manual clip file system to an online database of archived stories. Currently, he writes the paper's weekly News Quiz, does a weekly music CD review, and researches and writes local history articles for the South Bay History blog, in addition to his current duties as a night website editor for the Southern California News Group.

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